Returned to lender The Met accepts temporary loans of art both for short-term exhibitions and for long-term display in its galleries.
Benny and Mary Ellen Andrews
Alice Neel American
Not on view
This painting depicts an activist with whom Neel was intimately familiar, the artist Benny Andrews (1930–2006), seated alongside his wife, photographer Mary Ellen (1937–2020), who seems to suffer a bit in her husband’s shadow. Here, Andrews dominates the composition in an especially formidable, commanding manner. The work, which testifies to the political alignment of Neel and her sitters, was painted one year after she participated in three protests for racial justice organized by the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition (BECC), a group Benny Andrews had helped cofound in 1969 in response to The Met’s controversial exhibition Harlem on My Mind and with the mission of promoting racial equality in the art world.
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